| UK Copyright lawyer wanted to definitively answer two questions that are bugging me. Regardless of the copyright notice inserted by the copyright holder, is it 1) legal to make a copy of the content for personal use? 2) legal to you to take a copy from somebody else for personal use. The first is about doing things like ripping a CD to MP3 so you can play it on your iPod. My understanding is that ever since the first cassette tape recorders it became legal to do this. Somewhere prior to that you had to get a "license" of some sort to do it, but the law changed to allow it. It's also related to things like video recording commercial TV programs. It's important to point out that this is for personal use not for sharing with others. The second is a little more awkward because I'm only talking about the person receiving the copy, not the person giving it. And this is specifically about downloading music from an untrusted source that may or may not have a license to distribute it. I'm not interested in talking about the morals of all this. I'm trying to get sopme sort of definitive answer about whether it's legal and whether you're breaking the law by ignoring the copyright notice that may forbid it and hence whether the copyright notice is enforceable in these specific circumstances. If you can throw any light on the same issues in other jurisdictions so much the better. [from: JB Ecademy] |
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[ 16-Nov-04 12:10pm ] [ Law
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